Hello everyone. I want to start off with some words of gratitude: for parents and family who brought us into the world, raised us, and supported us; for teachers and administrators who shaped our intellect and sharpened our capabilities; and of course for my fellow graduating class of 2021 for being my peers, lab partners, teammates, and friends through it all. Thank You.

Over the past few weeks, as I sat wondering what in the world I should do with these few minutes given to me to cap off 13 years of school, I thought about the journey we have been on and really the journey we have been on together. I can still recall the very first day of Kindergarten at Quaker Hill School, when I sat myself down next to Mike Hajj and, the shy and reserved five-year-old I was, wasted no time in telling him all about my friend Michael from preschool. All of us soon got to know one another and eagerly made our elementary school friendships. But before long, we were introduced to even more peers upon our promotion to Clark Lane. Then, as socially-aware preteens, we were instead on a mad dash to pick out familiar faces and ugh, stay away from those outlanders from Oswegatchie and Great Neck. Luckily though, as we moved into High School, with hormones rushing through our bloodstreams, we once again started to come closer together. We joined clubs, sports teams, honors societies, made new friends, made awesome memories, and then as seniors it all culminated in one great final year of . . . wait. Something is wrong. Something is missing. Our great final year together culminated in a sudden switch to separation from—instead of unity with—our peers.

You’ve probably heard of FOMO: the fear of missing out. It is a phenomenon attributed especially to our generation as a consequence of our habitual social media use. Paradoxically, the more socially engaged we are online, the more chances there are to see what we are missing. If FOMO was bad before this past year, well . . .

It started with winter sports postseasons last year, out of state field trips. Then it was two weeks of school. Then it was the rest of the school year. Spring sports seasons, drama shows, concerts, end of year field trips, club meetings, junior prom, celebrations. School later returned but only one half of school, virtual school, virtual clubs, virtual experience. Experiencing a traditional spirit week, running through the halls, color wars, pep rallies, homecoming game, any football games, homecoming dance, staying at home. Abbreviated fall sports, no winter sports seasons again, field trips again, performances and concerts and celebrations of our hard work again.

That list is substantially abbreviated. My classmates and I know all too well how I could be here for hours going through everything that was missed. But as Søren Kierkegaard aptly pronounced, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” So we move forwards.

I don’t know how much the un-experience of this past year itself has directly made us stronger or better people overall. Sure, maybe some of us took the newfound personal time to learn a new skill, or read one of those weird things they used to have back in the Middle Ages called physical books. We might have had the time to rewatch all 236 episodes of Friends for the tenth time, or work out and drink water from gallon sized “covid jugs.” However in the end, all of it was underpinned by an injurious lack of social experience and interaction.

However, that tribulation is now largely over. After all, we are here this evening, all together out on our home field, with packed bleachers, celebrating truly the moment we have been waiting for in our lives so far. But I certainly will not deny that the year we have been through will influence our class moving forward.

To explain what I mean, I must make a confession. I egregiously betrayed my peers and moral duty as a member of the class by coming to school on senior skip day. So yes, twenty years from now I will get to have that fact hanging over me, that I was that nerd who didn’t skip school on senior skip day. But when I woke up that morning, knowing how severely limited were my opportunities left to go through a normal school day and how few I had already had this year, I just did not want to miss out. Perhaps there is a healthy version of FOMO here. One that encourages us to get up and seek out experiences because we have lost so many. It’s true that FOMO is known as a harmful anxiety because often, you aren’t missing as much as you think you are. I won’t pretend that coming to school that day changed my life in some great enlightening way. Learning how to fold a fancy napkin into the shape of a candle, as I did in Calculus that day, is not going to change my life. But at the very least, I wasn’t sitting at home, endlessly pondering how to fold a fancy napkin into a candle.

It is very possible that it’s just me. But if not, then this healthy FOMO must be common among us. We will be part of a generation that is not afraid to take chances and go after experiences. In fact, being afraid of doing the opposite. Our class of 2021 specifically, will be an essential part of that generation as the ones who know what they have lost and will stop at nothing to recover. With the pandemic, high school, and our childhoods behind us, all we can change now is what is in front of us.

So I’d like to give one last enormous thank you to everyone here today, and most of all to my fellow classmates: there is no-one else with whom I would rather live life forwards.